This website was archived on July 21, 2019. It is frozen in time on that date.

Sonya Mann's active website is Sonya, Supposedly.

Kindness Makes Communication Work Better

Niceness is pragmatism.

Tech-culture podcast Exponent came back from its summer hiatus on the 6th. In the most recent episode, hosts Ben Thompson and James Allworth discussed Amazon’s work culture in reaction to that now-infamous New York Times article. Their conversation touched on the necessity of soft skills even in creative environments where solid ideas take precedence over everything else.

Successful companies set high standards and enforce them. They must! There is no other way to ensure excellence. Trade-offs are inherent to this arrangement — you can’t care profoundly about your professional results, work devastatingly hard to build something amazing, and still spend plenty of quality time with your wife and kids. The laws of physics forbid it — you can only be in one place at a time. If you’re at the office, then you’re not tossing a frisbee around in the backyard.

office drone lyfe
Illustration by Yue Wu.

More crucially, competitive companies develop and cherish workplace cultures that demand people to identify and demolish subpar ideas. When you prop up bad suggestions to make their progenitors feel good, you guarantee a future of low-quality initiatives. Next stop, loss of market share! It makes sense that brilliant executives want to stamp out the impulse to be nice. Except wait, no, it only makes sense superficially.

Allworth called this attitude “the primacy of ideas”. He pointed out that brutal honesty about the merit of any proposition favors “thinkers” over “feelers”. We INTJs and the like are able to maintain some emotional distance, to take a step back and rationally examine feedback. (Which doesn’t mean we aren’t hurt by criticism — Thompson added that this type of person also views their work as their source of human value. If the output is deemed inferior, we judge ourselves very harshly.)

Allworth explained that a workplace culture hostile to people who prioritize relationships will end up being a monoculture, alienating the voices of potentially useful employees and limiting diversity of thought. Well… yeah. It will.

be well at work :)
Illustration by RSO.

I’m probably reacting emotionally (ha) and not being fair to either Thompson or Allworth, but it was frustrating to listen while they grudgingly came to the conclusion that there’s value in being nice. I can’t help but think that only men would hash this out at length before tentatively agreeing that maintaining relationships is important. I even felt bitter while listening. It seemed like a classic example of “feminine” strengths being devalued, left invisible by default. Of course, the conversation’s outcome was better than if they had decided soft skills weren’t worth anything at all — but did it really need to be debated?

I’m an intellect-first, analytical kind of person. I’m also a woman, socialized to be nice and put up with a lot of nonsense from other people. Maybe the combination of those contradictory tendencies makes it easy to realize that you need to present information in a way that people find acceptable. Intellectual merit isn’t everything — in fact, it isn’t anything without soft skills. Smart people who can’t work with other people aren’t going to get anything done. (To be clear, this is something the Exponent hosts mentioned and agreed on.)

illustration of a good idea taking off
Illustration by Senya Pixelev.

Of course, I went through the same personal-growth phase that Allworth and Thompson also discussed, aggressively wanting to be right and constantly believing that I knew best, before I realized that a good idea you can’t get anyone to buy into has the same results as a bad idea. That’s really my whole point here:

A good idea that you can’t persuade people to believe in is functionally the same as a bad idea.

Even famously brutal tech founders like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos had to figure out people-friendly ways to present their plans. We know this happened in part because otherwise Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon wouldn’t be iconic companies.

Luckily, collaborators can give each other straightforward feedback without being cruel. Thompson and Allworth do it on the podcast all the time! (More on this in an upcoming review of Ask a Manager blogger Alison Green’s book Managing to Save the World.) I think that’s why I was so frustrated — the necessity of niceness, or at least courtesy, seems utterly obvious, even if only based on their own dynamic. I don’t think the topic shouldn’t have been mentioned — here I am mentioning it at length — but I wonder why the conclusion surprised them.

Case Study of a Magazine Purchase

snapshot of Monocle Magazine
Snapshot via New York on Instagram.

I don’t remember the exact moment I discovered the existence of global culture magazine Monocle. But recently I bought a copy. (So sue me, I like luxury.) Tracing my progress toward that decision is interesting.

  1. Months ago I read a Nieman Lab interview with Monocle founder Tyler Brûlé.
  2. Last week I started a project about modern cities. The magazine’s radio station Monocle 24 has a show called The Urbanist, which I knew because Jessica Bridger mentioned contributing on her website. I listened and liked it.
  3. I sampled some of their other podcasts. Enjoyed them.
  4. I downloaded the Monocle 24 app, which alternates trendy multi-continent music shows with various talk segments. (The music lineup is slightly more repetitive than I’d prefer.)
  5. I thought, “If I like the audio this much, maybe I would like the magazine too.”
  6. I searched the web for other articles about Tyler Brûlé (found and read: 1, 2, 3, 4).
  7. I wrestled with Monocle’s ecommerce interface.
  8. I wanted the magazine enough that I tried again.
  9. Success! Received this email:

successful Monocle order

By the way, the cost wasn’t negligible: £6 copy + £16.75 shipping = $35 (roughly). If I had realized how expensive shipping would be before sending the purchase through, I would have found another way to get the magazine. I think Pegasus Books carries it…

If the magazine is pleasurable enough, I will probably subscribe. That’s $150+ dollars per year. Not nothing!

First Day Back & Anti-Natalism (Podcast Review)

First Day Back podcast by Montreal filmmaker Tally Abecassis
Check it out on iTunes.

Edited to add this disclaimer: I don’t think that people who have kids are bad or evil. It’s way more morally ambiguous than that, and I recognize that I have unorthodox views on this topic.


The inaugural season of the podcast First Day Back just finished. I loved it! The episodes were short and poignant; I made sure to listen right away whenever a new one auto-downloaded on my phone. (No other podcast has provoked the same devotion.) Driving to work in the morning, I listened. Brushing my teeth at night, I listened. I listened while walking my slow, old dog in the afternoon. First Day Back fit right into my life, and right into my heart. It sounds cheesy but it’s true (like many things that sound cheesy).

The creator and protagonist describes her project thus:

“a documentary podcast that follows filmmaker Tally Abecassis as she faces the challenges of picking up her career after an extended maternity leave. The narrative takes a real-life look at motherhood, gender roles, and work-life balance in a voice by turns serious, funny, and sometimes touching.”

Abecassis explains her topic accurately. Throughout the podcast she is candid and vulnerable, unafraid to reveal rejections or embarrassments. It’s a wonderful piece of work.

Portrait of Tally Abecassis by Claudine Sauvé via The Timbre.
Portrait of Tally Abecassis by Claudine Sauvé via The Timbre.

And yet… I don’t feel wholly positive about First Day Back.

I believe that having children is fundamentally violent. When you spawn new people, you risk that they will be born sick, blighted, or mentally ill. Not everything can be fixed — I know this from observing family members and coping with my own depression. I’m okay now — because I’m lucky. Because therapy and medication have worked for me. If I had different brain chemistry, or if my parents didn’t have money, I would be dead. Maybe homeless and/or addicted to a self-destructive substance.

Yes, it is human nature to want to bear offspring. Feeling the desire is okay. However, yielding to that urge is selfish. Wanting to be a parent at all, in any capacity, is selfish — it’s about serving yourself, not the child. It’s also human nature to punch people, but we strive to resolve disputes without fighting because we want to be better than our animal instincts.

“I think it’s really comfortable to lose yourself in motherhood, in a way, because it’s almost impossible to screw it up. I mean, even if you become an alcoholic, whatever, shitty mother. I mean, you’re still your kids’ mother, and they’re still going to love you, as fucked up as you are. […] It’s like, when you’re looking for validation, your kids are going to validate you.” — Tally Abecassis interviewed by Eric McQuade

I’m not an idiot — I don’t expect people to stop having kids just like I don’t expect war to die out. But I still think it’s bad, and I won’t participate. No, I don’t throw rocks at pregnant women or even try to convince people not to have babies. Why stage fruitless arguments? There’s no point in making people hate me without changing their minds. (And yet here I am, writing this…)

Infancy as defined by Shakespeare in As You Like It, via the Boston Public Library.
Infancy as defined by Shakespeare in As You Like It, via the Boston Public Library.

In answer to the obvious question, I plan to be a mother at some point. Because I can adopt! There are far too many children in the foster system, stranded without loving family homes. When I’m financially and emotionally ready, it will be a delight to provide a safe haven and usher a young person into adulthood. My motivation is just as selfish as a biological parent’s, but the odds are better than the child will benefit.

Listening to First Day Back made me like Abecassis so much. She seems very good-hearted. Her desires and inclinations line up well with mine — she’s a creative woman muddling through life, which I obviously relate to. The conflict is that I am fundamentally opposed to the choices Abecassis has made. I also think it’s ludicrous to expect to have it all — you can’t be a hands-on mom and have a full-fledged career. There is just not enough time in the day or energy in a body. Choices always involve trade-offs and it is profoundly arrogant to pretend that they don’t.

So. All of the above is my raw, mostly unfiltered, and probably crazy-sounding opinion. As I said in the beginning, I love First Day Back and I’m excited for the second season. I also feel very uncomfortable and angry about the portrayal of biological motherhood as a deserved and even virtuous condition.

What do you think? (I’m definitely apprehensive about the Facebook response to this. YAY.)


Follow-up from a reader: “I Remember The Circumstances That Led To Her Existence”.

Inspiration, Stymied

The Awl
Photo by Andrew Magill.

Yesterday I thought of a really good premise for an article. Now I can’t remember the idea. It arose after I listened to the first episode of The Awl’s podcast on the way to work. Editor John Herrman served as the show’s host and interviewed Jenna Worthman, the New York Times reporter who profiled Instagram gossip rag The Shade Room.

They talked about how weird and exhilarating the internet economy is, how platforms like Facebook respond to the way users interact on them more than the companies innovate independently. This dynamic makes room for miniature entrepreneurship in the cracks between the code — for instance, The Shade Room.

Facebook getting into news
Quoting Stratechery on Twitter.

As Herrman said in The Verge’s profile of the publication, “Our entire economy is just a giant science fiction writing prompt.” (The editor should have hyphenated “science fiction” — I can’t turn off my proofreading brain after work.)

And yet, for the life of me, I can’t remember the idea sparked by his discussion with Jenna Worthman. I suppose I could just replay the podcast and hopefully retrieve my notion, but that seems tedious. I’d rather be uninspired than bored. So I’m watching The Good Wife instead.

It’s fun to have a blog because I can document inanities.

The Awl
Another awl. Photo by Kevin K.

Being Mentored by the Longform Podcast

I am a young writer by every definition, twenty-one and relatively inexperienced. My ideas for my career are half-formed. Accordingly, this is an education-heavy portion of my life, which is good. I’m not going to college like many of my peers, but I am actively learning and developing myself as an editorial professional (broadly speaking).

the Longform podcast

Part of that is working, part of it is reading, and an increasingly large part is listening — not only to people in my “real” life, but also listening to wise strangers who aren’t addressing me specifically. For instance, I pay close attention to the journalists interviewed by Max Linsky, Aaron Lammer, and Evan Ratliff on the Longform podcast. (Only a few months ago, I didn’t like podcasts, but that opinion changed quickly after I acquired a commute.)

I don’t have access to many professional writers in my “real” life. Sure, occasionally I hang out with Adam Brinklow and I got to meet Yael Grauer the other day, but mostly I encounter regular people with a bunch of different types of jobs. Which is fine — variety is the spice of life, right? Only interacting with one type of person would be like having salt on your food and eschewing all over flavors.

But I dearly want to feel connected to people who do the work I aspire to. The Longform podcast gives me a window into the circumstances and habits of journalists I admire, and it feels… nourishing. It makes me believe the career I’m in love with is possible.

It’s awesome that the internet enables this. I know it was technically possible back when people mainly read words on paper, but not in the same way, at the same scale, or on demand. In 1985 I couldn’t have Twitter-followed everyone who wrote an article I liked, to keep up with their future posts and maybe talk to them personally. Being able to do that is so cool — and it helps me stay motivated.

the internet is a ship
The Flying Dutchman by Dean Meyers.

Sign up for my newsletter to stay abreast of my new writing and projects.

I am a member of the Amazon Associates program. If you click on an Amazon link from this site and subsequently buy something, I may receive a small commission (at no cost to you).